First of all: let's spare ourselves the shame of including the national debt of the villains of our time, the Russians, in the comparison. Their national debt is currently just under 15%! But that is of no further interest to us at this point, as the West and the international community of good states have finally isolated Russia, which will no longer play a role in the total treatment. The fuss about the BRICS countries and their growing energy power is completely overrated and quite rightly ignored by the mass media.
So let's get back to the international race of the debt kings, where Japan is still hovering at lonely heights, but is now slowly facing competition from the ambitious socialists and Keynesians from China and the USA.
The figures are from 2022, but it is easy to add about three to five percent of new debt to the balance sheet of horror for each additional year. In general, it can be said that the trend towards higher debt is a built-in fiat money mechanism to roll over the existing debt mountains plus the accruing interest into the future. So expect more in light of the fact that individual sectors of the economy, such as the real estate market in China, are already collapsing in a deflationary spiral.
Bank balance sheets live on inflated asset prices to accelerate credit. This is the price we pay for a frictional monetary system that has detached itself from any respectability and real valuation of assets. This will continue until the winner of this debt race collapses and takes the other ailing countries with it. Prepare for high volatility in the bond markets in particular as we head towards the point of debt saturation globally.
Governments will do all they can to oblige large capital accumulators, banks or pension funds to take even more of their debt junk onto their balance sheets.
In this way, the poison of bad debt is seeping deeper and deeper into our society, contaminating the last opportunities to build up capital without distortion and credit risk.